Cutting meat consumption in
Singapore is an urgent task,
because decreased meat consumption can provide a range of benefits, including improved
health, reduced suffering by other animals, a healthier environment, and more
food available to the millions of people without food. This year’s
Singapore Meatout Week will be remembered for the many steps forward that were
taken.

Familiar food outlets
once again offered Meatout discounts, new ones joined the list, and others
contacted us about being included next year.

Our first-ever
library exhibition at the National Library provided a focal point for
people to learn about vegetarianism and VSS, and we’ve been asked to
do an exhibition at Woodlands Regional Library later this year.

The Meatout dinner
at Greenland Vegetarian Restaurant saw a largest-ever turnout of 300.

The Organic Tour
sold out quickly, and now a tour company wants to organize more of the
same for us.

The JC Essay
Contest was another first-time event. The quantity of entries was
disappointing, but please have a look at the winners at and see if you
don’t agree that their quality helped compensate for lack of
quantity: http://www.singaporemeatout.org/winners.htm.

Meatout received
lots of publicity on various radio stations in a number of languages plus
extensive coverage in The Straits Times
supplement “Mind Your Body.”

Please send your own feedback on Singapore Meatout
Week 2006 and your ideas for next year to info@.... We want
to start early on the planning for Singapore Meaotut Week 2007.

The August VSS Wellness Seminar presents two videos that
dramatically illustrate powerful reasons to go veg. The first video, Race for Life, highlights a woman in the
U.S.
who recovered from breast cancer by switching to a proper veg diet and doing
lots of exercise. Not only did she beat cancer, she also went on to win
triathlon races in her age group. In the second video, Devour the Earth, Sir Paul McCartney
explains how our dietary choices affect the well-being of the environment. He
pinpoints damage done by modern factory farming of our fellow animals for meat.

A short discussion and light organic
refreshments follow the video screenings. Here are the details:

A low-fat vegan diet
treats type 2 diabetes more effectively than a standard diabetes diet and may
be more effective than single-agent therapy with oral diabetes drugs, according
to a study in the August issue of Diabetes
Care, a journal published by the American Diabetes Association. Study participants on the low-fat vegan diet
showed dramatic improvement in four disease markers: blood sugar control,
cholesterol reduction, weight control and kidney function. The randomized
controlled trial was conducted by doctors and dieticians with the Physicians
Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), the George
Washington University ,
and the University
of Toronto with funding
from the National Institutes of Health and the Diabetes Action Research and
Education Foundation.

An ultramarathon is
defined as any race longer than the marathon distance of 42.195 km (26+ miles). Probably the
world’s top ultramarathoner is Scott Jurek, a vegan. Scott’s
latest victory was in a race that covered 135
miles over 13,000 vertical feet from Death Valley to the base of Mount Whitney
in the U.S. ,
with temperatures often over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Tall and trim but a bit less lanky than many
hard-core runners, Jurek logs 55-70 miles a week on average, and 100-120 as he’s
peaking before a big race – running as many as he can on wooded trails.
In recent years, he’s added yoga, weightlifting and a vegan diet to his
training regimen.

Instead of milk, eggs, steak and other staples of many meat-eating
runners’ diets, Jurek eats a lot of tofu, tempeh (a high-protein food
made of cooked soybeans) and whole grains, and adds things such as almonds,
hemp seed and protein powder to the smoothies he often blends up for breakfast.

Watermelon is inexpensive, easy to find at most fruit
stalls, sweet and great for cooling off on a hot day. Now, more evidence is
emerging of watermelon’s health benefits, including that it’s rich
in the phytochemical lycopene. Tasty and healthy too? Is that possible? Looks
like it is: http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/AR/archive/jun02/lyco0602.htm.